More Swarms!

In my last update on Sunday 3rd May, I'd finally managed to collect the swarm from neighbour Mark's garden.  The bees were safely housed in a nucleus, and everything was back to normal.  Or so I thought.

The next day (Monday 4th) they swarmed again.  I don't know why, but for some reason the bees abandoned the nucleus and headed off to another neighbour's garden (Julia's, this time).  So, off I went again, with a bucket, loppers and the now-empty nuc for round 2.  This time, they were about 8ft up in a crab-apple tree.  At least they were easy to reach this time.  Unfortunately, they were clustered around a thick branch, just at the point where it divided.  There was nothing else for it - Julia lent me a saw and I started hacking away.  Eventually, the swarm - and accompanying branch - was free:

The only way to be sure I had all the bees was to put the piece of branch - with swarm still attached - into the nucleus, and then carry it back to the apiary.  Eventually they settled down, and I'm relieved to report they didn't swarm again.

The next incident was on the bank holiday, last Friday.  I'd checked Dorothy's colony, in the brown nucleus, 6 days previously - and all seemed fine.  Unfortunately, I must have missed a queen cell, so off they went.  This time, they decided to set up home in my neighbour Darren's chimney.  There's no way I can collect them from there, so I suppose they will just set up home and have a happy summer, undisturbed by beekeepers.

That brings us to today.  I checked the blue nucleus (the Mark / Julia swarm) first.  All looked good, and the queen has started laying.  That meant I could mark her, so I popped her in the marking cage and put a dot of blue paint on her thorax.  Next, I checked the now-queenless brown nucleus.  There were a couple of queen cells, but no sign of any new queen.  I decided it would be easier for me to manage the nucs by combining them, so I prepared by removing the old frames with the queen cells (there was very little brood, so it was a good opportunity to remove the old comb and burn it).  I then replaced with fresh.  The handy thing about the brown nuc is it has a detachable floor, which allows me to put it on top of the blue nuc and make a double-height nucleus, like this:

When combining colonies in this way there is a risk that the bees will fight, so it helps if you can make them mingle slowly, so they get used to each other.  The way this is done is by putting a layer of newspaper between the two boxes.  The bees will nibble through the paper and start to circulate through the holes that they make.  This way, they get used to each other's pheromones without getting aggressive.  At least, that's the idea - I will find out next week how they've got on.

All was fine in Katherine's hive - they were very well behaved, and no queen cells.

In hive #2 I was please to see that the new queen (the one that had emerged after the swarm) had started laying.  She also got a blue dot on her thorax, and then that was the end of the day's beekeeping.  I'm pleased to note that hive #2, which has had a bit of a temper in the last few weeks, was much better behaved today.

Now that I'm back to three laying queens, I'm hoping that's the end of all this swarming nonsense and everything will be a bit more orderly for the next few weeks.  One other thing - I have two newly-marked queens, and regular readers will know that I always name my queens when I mark them.  Tune in to the next update to find out what they're called...